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Posts Tagged ‘Non-Profit’

Fill Your Empty Seats with RCG’s Exclusive Marketing Planning Package

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

We’ve been giving you guys tons of tips and how-tos about conference marketing, and now its time to help you put it all together and fill those empty seats at your next conference.

“We cannot adjust the wind… but we can adjust the sails.” Unknown

This marketing plan package equips association and non-profit executives with the tools and knowledge to fill the empty seats. This package is especially designed for:

Associations and non-profits with a limited staff
Organizations not meeting their attendance goals
Organizations with an In-house marketing team that needs a fresh set of eyes to review currents strategies

We are only offering this special package in the first quarter of 2010. If you want to reach your conference attendance goals for next year, then check out the details and special price for the workday sessions and remote guidance provided in our exclusive Marketing Planning Package.

Tags: association conference, associations, Increase Conference Attendance, Increase Member Retention, Marketing a Conference, member engagement, Membership Marketing, Non-Profit, nonprofits, Rottman Creative Group, strategic thinking, visual communicators
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Three Key Facebook Features Nonprofits Should Use

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Facebook’s popularity is still growing at exponential rate. Is your nonprofit taking advantage of this gold mine?

Here are three key features that can help your organization get the most out of Facebook:

Key Feature #1: Pages

Facebook has introduced Fan Pages for businesses and organizations, whereas, profiles are meant for individuals. From your Facebook Fan Page you can build community and increase communication with your members by posting updates, sharing pictures, blogging and interacting with your fans. It can also be helpful in recruiting volunteers, raising money and essential networking. It is free to set up a Facebook Fan Page. The only commitment your organization will have to make is one of committing time to create the page and keep it active.

Key Feature #2: Causes

Facebook has a diverse group of users who want to use their Facebook for various reasons. To help users get just what they want out of the social networking site, Facebook has allowed other companies (or web geeks) to create Applications which users can download to their profile. These thousands of applications include games, ways to share music or pictures, quizzes, polls, and lots more. The one that nonprofits need to be aware of is Causes. Instead of us telling you what they do, here’s a snippet from their website:

“Causes offers nonprofit organizations of every budget size, staff capacity, and issue area access to Facebook and MySpace, which between them have over 400 million monthly unique visitors. Facebook, the world’s “stickiest” site, sees over 100 million people log in on a daily basis. Beyond the sheer reach of these social networks, Causes provides nonprofits with specialized tools for spreading awareness, building community, fundraising, circulating petitions, and promoting other actions. Whether you want to reach out to a new supporter demographic, expand your donor base, engage and mobilize existing supporters, or spread the word about your incredible work, Causes is a platform for efficiently and effectively achieving those goals.”

The Causes website has a wealth of information for nonprofits interested in using their platform, including everything you need to know to get started, success stories from other nonprofits, and information on corporate and foundation matching grants.

Key Feature #3: Events

Besides allowing users to manage their contacts and multimedia, Facebook has a feature which allows users to create events and invite guests. You can customize the event, edit its privacy settings, invite members (you can also invite members not on Facebook through email) and add pictures or video. After creating the event, you can send reminder messages to your guests, monitor RSVPs, and interact with guests via a comment section.

Tags: association members, associations, Connect with a Younger Crowd, facebook, member engagement, member feedback, Membership Marketing, Non-Profit, nonprofits, social media, social media tools, visual communicators
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The Adult Version of Rock’em Sock’em

Monday, July 13th, 2009

When it comes to meeting conference attendance goals or fundraising goals, we know that sometimes you feel like the champ, but there are also times when you’ve taken a hard hit.

The competition can be tough as you battle for your audience’s attention and commitment. Many associations are finding that marketing plans that have worked in the past are now producing poor results.

Remember the classic game Rock’em Sock’em? The hours of fun spent knocking off the block of your tough opponents? And, the strategy that went into moving your red or blue robot into position, throwing punches at the perfect time – and most importantly, to try again after defeat.

Association marketing can often feel like today’s adult version of Rock’em Sock’em. You take those hard-blowing punches when e-mail blasts give less-than-desired results, or few members are jumping on board for early-registration.

It’s times like these that you simply have to pick yourself up, and keep swinging. Think on your feet and keep an open mind to new possibilities. If the same old punches aren’t working anymore, learn some new ones. Strengthen the impact of your conference marketing with a finely tuned logo. Improve membership retention with better communication through social media. Re-think your event marketing plan.

Keep rockin’ and sockin’ to discover those block-buster punches, and celebrate with that beloved gotcha victory cry!

Tags: association conference, associations, conference, Conference Marketing Plan, Increase Conference Attendance, Marketing a Conference, member feedback, member growth, member retention, Membership Marketing, Non-Profit, nonprofits, strategic thinking
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Direct Mail + Social Media Marketing = Fundraising Success!

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

To compliment our recent Whitespace Newsletter about conference marketing success by integrating direct mail and social media, we put together a few tips for our nonprofit friends who are slightly more interested in fundraising.

We’ve put together 4 easy tips to help nonprofits:

Engage previous supporters
Find new prospects
Convert prospects to donors
Raise more money without greatly increasing your budget

Tip #1

Let supporters know about your presence on social networking sites. In addition to finding supporters on Facebook and LinkedIn with your current email list, you can also inform them about connecting with the nonprofit through these channels with short blurbs on direct mail pieces, emails and the organization’s website.

Tip #2

Respond to feedback from social networking sites, and share it with supporters who are likely keeping up with the organization through direct mail or email. The nature of social networking is that it allows users to provide instant feedback – the good, the bad, and sometimes the ugly. We’re not going to touch on how to handle the bad or the ugly, but we think you should sing the good feedback from the rooftops! Well, not exactly, but we do recommend you share it on direct mail pieces and emails, just like any other testimonial.

Tip #3

Integrate the campaign logo and theme across all mediums. Some organizations feel that their online marketing has to have a different “brand” than the rest of their marketing. This has potential to confuse the audience. We recommend using the same logo and theme for your fundraising campaign, despite how you are communicating with potential supporters. However, this does not mean you can use the exact same message, word-for-word on your direct mail piece as used on the nonprofit’s Facebook Fan page.

Tip #4

A popular trend (and useful tool) on Twitter is to tag posts with a hash tag (#), plus a keyword. This helps identify what the post is about, but also makes it easy to find when conducting searches. One of the most popular tags is #charitytuesday. This tag is used, you guessed it, on Tuesdays. Twitter users will post something about their favorite nonprofit and include this tag, hoping that the post will help raise awareness.

Alerting Twitter followers about upcoming direct mail pieces will peak their interest and let them know you need their help in raising awareness about the campaign. This is a great opportunity for nonprofits during a fundraising campaign with the potential to encourage matching gifts and referrals.

Tags: associations, Membership Marketing, Non-Profit, nonprofits, social media tools, strategic thinking, visual communicators
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Relief Effort for Pakistani Refugees

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Recently we were asked to create an ad for a unique national campaign to raise funds to support Pakistani Refugees fleeing war-torn Swat Valley. As the number of men, women and children recently uprooted by the conflict in north-west Pakistan neared 2.4 million, the UN Refugee Agency stated that it is “absolutely essential” that the international community mount an immediate and massive humanitarian response. This campaign was kicked off by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she asked the American people to join in the world-wide humanitarian effort in Pakistan:

“Now, Americans can use technology to help, as well. Using your cell phones, Americans can text the word “Swat” — to the number 20222 and make a $5 contribution that will help the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees provide tents, clothing, food, and medicine to hundreds of thousands of affected people. And before I came over here, we did that in the State Department. So we are making some of the first donations to this fund.”

It’s an honor for us to participate in a campaign that can easily positively impact the lives of people in dire need of basics for survival. After learning about the magnitude of this refugee crisis, we set forth to design web and print ads. Here’s a little tip for nonprofits – we were able to obtain amazing pictures of refugees from the Associated Press. The photos they shared with us tell the story of desperation, need and hope better than we could explain with words. The AP is often willing to share their photos with nonprofits, and will typically offer them at a reasonable price.

Keep an eye out for our ad to appear in some national publications, but more importantly we hope you participate in the campaign. To learn more, visit www.unrefugees.org.

Tags: 20222, associations, Hillary Clinton, Non-Profit, nonprofits, Pakistani Refugees, Rottman Creative Group, Swat Valley, Text SWAT
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A Lesson in Using Google Analytics to Optimize Web Performance

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

One of the most sophisticated, safe, and user-friendly web analytics programs just happens to also be free for anyone to use, regardless of site size or amount of traffic. For many web developers, marketers and site owners, Google Analytics seems like a gift too good to be true. It performs just as well (if not better) than costly, high-end web analytics programs.

Google Analytics is enabled by including a tracking code in the template of your website. This code allows Google to see every page of your site and then give you information about the traffic you’re receiving.

We use Google Analytics to track the performance of our website by observing how visitors interact with our online content. On a regular basis we review our Google Analytics stats to evaluate which pages of our site are getting the most traffic, where those visitors are coming from, and how they are interacting with our site once they arrive.

This is invaluable information for any site owner who desires to make their website a powerful means of communication. The data provided to use from Google Analytics allows us to transform our website from being a one-way piece of communication, into a conversation with our visitors. Without this data, we would just be spewing information onto the web then sitting back hoping that the right people would find us, and that hopefully we’ve lived up to their expectations. But, through the magic of Google Analytics we discover how and why visitors come to our site, if they found what they were looking for, and how often they return. Then we respond in the conversation, by taking this information and tailoring our online content to better meet the needs of our visitors.

Most recently we identified a page on our site that was receiving a high amount of traffic compared to other pages on our site. Assisting associations with conference marketing is a popular service we offer our clients, but it was still pleasantly surprising to see the amount of traffic generated by a recent White Space (our monthly newsletter) edition on the topic. This simple page was where we dumped the newsletter after sending it out to our subscribers.

Our Google Analytics told us that visitors were coming to this page when searching for:

Conference Marketing Plan
Increase Conference Attendance
Marketing A Conference Steps Deciding On The Content
Conference Attendance Down
Marketing Plan + Annual Conference

This clued us in on what our visitors are expecting when coming to this page: they want to see tips, information and resources about annual conference marketing. As you can tell, this is not rocket science.

With this information in mind we decided to improve this page of our site in hopes of better meeting our visitors’ expectations.

First, we added a link to our blog – a place that we update regularly with tips and resources that can be useful to associations planning a conference.
Second, we added a blurb about who we are and what we do to give the user an idea of who they are taking advice from.
And lastly, we added a link to our digital portfolio, which is a great opportunity for visitors to get an idea of how our ideas translate to strategy and practical pieces of visual communication.

Now when visitors come to this page, they have easy access to more information on the topic of their interest, they get a better idea of who we are and our capabilities, and they generally have a more enjoyable user experience.

With the help of our Google Analytics data we have quickly and easily transformed a high-trafficked page of our site into a stronger means of communicating with prospects. Associations and nonprofits have very different goals for their websites than we have for ours, but this lesson in optimizing web performance can easily translate to your site. The data provided to you through Google Analytics can boost your website’s ability to capture the interest of potential members or sponsors and inspire current members for specific actions such as renewal or purchasing a product.

Tags: association members, associations, Conference Marketing Plan, Google Analytics, Increase Conference Attendance, Increase Member Retention, Marketing a Conference, member feedback, Membership Marketing, Non-Profit, nonprofits, Rottman Creative Group, strategic thinking
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Three Easy Steps to Energize Local Visibility

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Many associations and nonprofits have service areas that stretch far beyond their “hometown”, but that doesn’t excuse them from striving to build a vibrant, healthy reputation among the local population. Regularly communicating who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how your association makes a difference, can make a strong impression on the local community – which is comprised of potential sponsors, partners, volunteers, members and other valuable connections.

Many organizations are familiar with traditional means of PR, but are still a little uncertain how to take advantage of social media. Reaching out to your community through local websites and blogs is an easy, powerful, and often free way to increase visibility. Here is a simple three step process to help your organization seize rich, local PR opportunities.

Step 1: Scope out local blogs and websites.

You’re probably already familiar with the local newspaper and other print publications, therefore step it up a notch and search for online news sources. The first step to starting a local PR campaign is to identify where your audience is already having online conversations and where they are going to get information.

Spend an hour or two browsing the websites of your local newspaper and TV stations. You may be lucky enough to find a guide to your area’s best blogs. If not, specifically look for news that is being pulled into their website from local blogs. It is becoming very common for traditional media companies to aggregate information from smaller, topical, local blogs that are run by citizen journalists.

The first place you should start is with local business-focused websites. Regardless of your organization’s mission and reach, the common factor between you and the community is that you employ members of the community and conduct business with other local businesses. Secondly, start looking at topical blogs and websites.

Make a list of the blogs and websites that you feel have the best chance for promoting your organization’s news. Be sure to single out the contact person for each website you identify as having potential for your organization’s message.

Step 2: Send 1-2 press releases a month to local news sites.

All the local news and information sites you’ve identified need new, regular content since they likely update daily, and they will gladly welcome any news-worthy information or story you pass along to them. Also, one of the great benefits of a press release is that you have control over what information is shared. You will find that some websites may simply post your information (or a shortened version of it), which is typical for many print publications as well. But many blogs prefer to make their posts more personal, and may offer the opportunity to have a key staff or board member be a guest blogger.

It’s imperative that you follow basic guidelines of telling a compelling story with a strong news angle in each of your press releases. To increase the chances of your information being published on the websites you contact, make sure it is relevant to your audience and answers the 5 Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. Remember to include plenty of contact information.

Step 3: Add a news section to your website.

News pages are a great way to manage content about events, sponsorships, and all forms of company news. It can become a place where local media outlets can depend on getting the latest information about your organization. In addition to being an invaluable communication tool, it is a great opportunity to boost credibility and return the favor of linking to the websites that post your information.

A sound local PR strategy can go a long way in boosting local recognition and enhancing credibility for any association or nonprofit, especially if you are intentional in seeking out online hotspots for your community. While it’s fresh on your mind, jot down a couple of topics for upcoming press releases and start your search for relevant websites.

Tags: association leaders, association members, associations, Increase Member Retention, member engagement, member feedback, member growth, member retention, Membership Marketing, Non-Profit, nonprofits, strategic thinking, visual communicators
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Making Valuable Connections Through Twitter

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

One of the things we love about working at RCG is that we get the opportunity to meet and connect with amazing nonprofits that are making a positive difference in the lives of others. Recently we had the pleasure of “meeting” another influential nonprofit over Twitter.

Cradles to Crayons (@C2CPhilly) provides low-income and homeless children the basic essentials they need to be safe, warm, ready to learn, and valued. They also set a foundation for lasting change through the meaningful, tangible volunteer opportunities that they provide to thousands of youth and adults each year. Cradles to Crayons is not a client of ours, but we greatly respect the hard work they are doing to enrich the lives of deserving children. What a great way to impact a community! Connecting with them over Twitter has taught us another valuable lesson about social networking.

We do, and receive, a lot of preaching about how social networking can increase your business opportunities and resources– but a benefit that is often overlooked is the power of social networking to encourage and inspire. Connecting with Cradles to Crayons over Twitter allowed us to learn about their mission, which inspired and encouraged us in the work that we do for our clients who are also nonprofits. It’s a connection that served as a great reminder of the good in the world today, and for a few moments inspired us as we connected with the world beyond our desks.

Tags: associations, Connect with a Younger Crowd, Increase Member Retention, member engagement, member feedback, member growth, Membership Marketing, Non-Profit, nonprofits, strategic thinking, twitter
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First Quarter Review for Associations

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

It’s hard to believe that we are already ending the first quarter of 2009. With all the hype from a new president to the worries over the economy, these first few months have gone by quickly. But, being aware of this and being mindful of how staying on track to achieve our annual goals is a great strength and opportunity for any organization or person to adopt.

It’s not uncommon for professionals or associations to set annual goals at the beginning of each year, but how often do they become like most other new year’s resolutions that are forgotten by Valentine’s Day? Even if you didn’t set annual goals for your association this year, you can still benefit from reviewing the first quarter. Use these prompts to help you reflect back on the first quarter of 2009 and identify successes and areas that need more attention in the coming months.

How many new members joined the association?
Are you on track to reach your annual goal?
How many renewed membership?
What is your retention rate thus far?
Are you on track to reach your annual goal?
Are you ahead or behind the game for accomplishing tasks that were scheduled to be accomplished in the first quarter?
What new connections with possible partners or sponsors has your association made?
Did you release any products/publications this quarter?
How much money has your association received through membership dues, donations and non-due revenues?
Are you on track to reach your annual goal?
Review the association’s spending, are you within budget?
What response did you receive from marketing efforts?
Did you receive positive feedback from communication with members?
What are areas that you’ve identified as successes for the first quarter of 2009?
What areas have you identified that need more attention, work and focus to help you reach your annual goals of 2009?
Are there areas of operation that you should consider outsourcing or getting assistance with?
How do you need to adjust your workflow, marketing, budget, plans, operation, etc. to get on track, or stay on track to achieve your annual goals?

Simply taking an hour or two to review how your association has preformed over the past few months can greatly increase your chances for having a successful 2009 as you can adjust your plan for the next 3 quarters.